1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system for managing play lists.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digitally stored music continues to gain popularity. Rather than drive to a store, consumers are downloading music from the Internet and playing music on a computer or on a digital music player. An example of a digital music player is the Rio digital music player from Diamond Multimedia. This music player includes a flash memory for storing music and electronics for playing the music. One advantage of digital music is that the storage medium is writeable. Thus, the user can choose what songs to play and write those songs to the music player""s storage medium. On the other hand, audio compact discs are not writeable. In addition to the versatility offered by digital music, there is a huge variety of music available to be downloaded through the Internet. With the acceptance of a standard for compressed audio files, digital music has soared in popularity.
Users of digital music technology can acquire large amounts of digital music files. In order to manage these files, play lists are created. For example, a play list may be a list of songs to be played by a music player. Play lists allows users to group their songs according to whatever method the user desires and plays the tracks referenced by the play list on a music player.
One problem that has been associated with play lists is the enormous effort needed to manage play lists. As the user acquires large amounts of files, managing the play list becomes difficult. A user may have multiple or hundreds of play lists. Additionally, the user may have hundreds or thousands of music files. The effort to move a large number of files into the appropriate play lists is time consuming. Furthermore, as users download new files, the user must remember to add the new tracks to one or more play lists. This two step approachxe2x80x94(1) downloading music files and (2) moving the downloaded files to one or more play listsxe2x80x94is cumbersome. Therefore, many users stop using play lists.
Thus, there is a need for an improved means for managing play lists.
The present invention, roughly described, provides for a play list manager than can be used to create and update play lists. The play lists can be used for audio information, visual information or a combination of audio and visual information. In one embodiment, a play list stores the names of tracks to be played. The user of the play list manager creates a play list and specifies certain criteria for automatically adding tracks to the play list. When a new track is added to the environment, the system tests whether the track""s properties satisfy the criteria for the play list. If so, the new track is automatically added to the play list. In one alternative, a user can select to create or update a predefined play list whose criteria has already been created. Upon selection of the predefined play list, the play list manager accesses each track and automatically adds the track to the play list if the track""s properties satisfy the criteria for the predefined play list. In one embodiment, after a play list is created and tracks are added, the tracks on the play list are automatically played.
One embodiment of the present invention includes the steps of comparing a set of one or more properties of a first track to criteria of a first play list and automatically adding the first track to the first play list if the properties of the first track satisfy the criteria of the first play list. One embodiment includes detecting that the first track is available such that the step of comparing is performed automatically in response to the step of detecting. Another embodiment of the present invention includes comparing properties for a first track to play list criteria for a plurality of play lists and automatically adding the first track to each of the play lists having play list criteria satisfied by the properties for the first track. Thus, the method can be used to create or update one play list or multiple play lists. In another embodiment, the present invention includes receiving a request to generate a play list having predefined play list criteria, determining which tracks from a set of tracks have properties satisfying the play list criteria and automatically adding to the play list the tracks having properties satisfying the play list criteria.
The present invention can be implemented using software, hardware or a combination of software and hardware. When all or portions of the present invention are implemented in software, that software can reside on a processor readable storage medium. Examples of an appropriate processor readable storage medium include a floppy disk, a hard disk, CD-ROM, memory or IC, flash memory, etc. In one embodiment, the hardware used to implement the present invention includes an output device (e.g. a monitor, a printer, speakers, etc.), an input device (e.g. a keyboard, pointing device, etc.), a processor, an input interface and a processor readable storage medium. The input interface allows the processor to communicate with a disk drive, network or other device for entering data into the hardware. The processor readable storage medium stores program code capable of programming the processor to perform the steps to implement the present invention. The present invention can be implemented on a desktop computer, network server, as part of a web page on the Internet, another type of computing platform, a head unit, a server, an audio device, a visual device, or any other device suitable for using the present invention.